


Epilogue

by Star_Woes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Genre: Angst, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Canon Compliant, Clones, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Happy Ending, Memory Loss, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:21:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21919039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Woes/pseuds/Star_Woes
Summary: SPOILERS--------She stares at him, eyes wide and breathless."Ben?"It's him. It's really him. He stands stoically, his eyes never leaving hers."Ben!"Rey begins to run towards him. He looks real, there's no ghostly blue aura that surrounds him. She reaches out towards his face and her fingers tenderly brush over his scar. Rey frowns slightly, shifting her gaze upwards to her Ben. Except he's not. A force closes around her neck and the last thing she remembers is the cold, unforgiving eyes of Kylo Ren.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 38
Kudos: 110





	1. New Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> I could not live with the end of TROS, it legit gave me insomnia and I needed a cannon compliant fix it ahaha.

“Rey Skywalker.”

Rey gives a bittersweet smile and looks out onto the Tatooine horizon, giving a slight nod to the force ghosts of Luke and Leia. Was she slightly disappointed that Ben hadn’t immediately apparated in front of her? Sure, but Ben would come later. She had waited all her life for her parents, she could wait just as long for him. She’d wait her entire life if she needed to.

Rey ached all over. She put on a strong front, acting as if she remained unaffected. But it was starting to take a toll on her. Physically, she ached all over and spent most nights lying and staring at the multitude of stars that glittered over the Lars moisture farm. Mentally, Rey couldn’t push her impatience away, she wanted…no, needed her Ben to come back. The isolation on Jakku was nothing like the loneliness that she was currently experiencing. As for Force-wise, the severed force bond left an emptiness in her that couldn’t be fixed. On the rare occasion that she did fall asleep, Rey would be violently awakened by visions of Ben’s bloody and lifeless body in her arms. 

Rey was used to being put in difficult circumstances, but nothing was ever beyond her control. She was dumped on a desert planet with nothing, and yet she survived. She fought the notorious First Order and defeated an infamous Sith lord. The only times she had ever truly felt helpless was with Ben. First with Han, then with their force bond and finally when he disappeared from her forever.

Looking towards the stars, she allowed herself to shed a single tear. “I miss you.”

Ben Solo was in limbo. “Rey! REY! I’m right here. Rey please, I’m right here! Rey!” He’s tried everything but she can’t see him, can’t hear him, kriff, she doesn’t even know he’s right there. He caresses her cheek, but his hand never makes contact. There’s no one else, no other force ghosts can sense his presence and he’s stuck between the living and the dead, completely alone. Ben watches her slowly nod off to sleep, curled in a tight ball and looking so vulnerable. Just like him she’s completely alone. 

In a selfish way, it’s reassuring for him. He knows he should want her to be happy and to move on, but he can’t. The thought of her being wrapped in someone else’s arms, growing old and kissing someone else makes his blood boil.

That is, for the first few months. After a year, he starts to get worried.

She’s frailer than ever, her rigorous training regime has slowly morphed into an obsession. She’s not eating well and isn’t sleeping. Dark circles are permanently etched under her eyes and Ben can see her bones starting to poke out of her clothes. Her friends try to drag her out of Tatooine, but she refuses to go. They first try every seven days, but it’s not long before their appearances become increasingly infrequent, Ben can’t remember the last time they had tried to convince her to get back on the Millennium Falcon. Whilst he originally felt relief every time that ex-stormtrooper and the arrogant General left defeated, Ben now anxiously awaits their arrival, hoping that they can convince Rey to at least sleep or gain some sustenance. 

After two years he’s livid.

Rey has gone from isolation to desolation. She hides it, whenever her friends visit but her facade cracks the second their ship leaves the atmosphere. Luke and Leia’s words offer little consolace to her. And Ben? Ben can only watch helplessly as her downward spiral only accelerates with every passing day. He’s lost count of how many times he’s tried to reach out to her and pleading for her to leave the past behind her and to start living again. When he’s not screaming himself hoarse, he’s meditating, looking to the force on how to fix this. It’s only after the fifth month that Ben receives the answer he’s been looking for. He had just shut his eyes to meditate, when he felt a shift in the atmosphere. Panicked, Ben’s eyes snapped wide open and he let out an audible gasp as he was confronted by his reflection.

Except its not his reflection, it has his face and body but it’s young, childlike, eyes shut and unmoving in a tank full of milky white fluid. Ben blinks, noticing the hundreds of tanks that are aligned next to this one, some hideously deformed, whilst others are filled with clones of him at different stages of life. It is then that Ben remembers, back when he had taken control of the First Order, he went on a convoluted journey to track down the old cloning facilities that Vader had visited. His explorations had taken him to Dantooine where the Jedi had experimented on cloning, and where Vader was sighted fighting a copy of himself, and after months of searching and recovering map coordinates, he found himself on the inundated planet of Kamino. There, he had spoken with Kaminoan and offered his DNA for their experimentation with force sensitive beings. At the time it seemed like a safe backup plan in case an unfortunate demise, but now…this could be his way of getting back to Rey. He presses his hands against the tank’s glass and raises an eyebrow when he notices its cool texture. Ben wants nothing more to dive into the body and bring it to life, but its not yet ready. Reluctantly, he retracts his hands and steps back, finding himself back on the sandy plains of Tatooine.

“Soon, Rey. Please just wait a little bit longer.”

By the third year, he’s desperate.

Rey’s sorrow has turned into anger. She stomps around the farm, oscillating between cursing him for not appearing and begging Leia to seek out where he is. Ben has to force himself to listen to how she cries herself to sleep. This isn’t his Rey. She’s stronger than this, she’s survived much worse and yet he flinches every time she collapses from exhaustion and her shaky hands drop her lightsabre.

"Where are you! I’m waiting and waiting and you’re still not here!” She screams up towards the stars, fists tightly clenched around her staff, before crumpling to the filthy ground. Her knees hit the floor and she begins to sob. “I need you, Ben…”

Ben can’t take it anymore. It hurts too much to see her in this state. He’d rather watch her be with someone else than witness her wither away in his absence. “Please! Let me speak to her. I’ll do anything!”

“What pure intentions. And such undying love for each other. It’s a pity both of you could not survive that battle.” A soft voice startles Ben to jerk his head up and come face to face with a pale woman with green hair. She’s got a pure white aura around her, unlike the common blue mist that normally surrounds force ghosts.

He frowns. “Who are you? How can you see me?”

She gives him a faint smile. “I am The Daughter. I am the embodiment of the light side of the force. You had a very special force bond with that girl, did you not?”

Ben blinks. He vaguely remembers Luke droning on about some ancient history during the Clone War. The Daughter, if he recalled correctly, represented compassion, love and selflessness. “You can manipulate the force like no other.” He deadpans. “Can you help me?”

She looks wistfully towards Rey. “She is very weak right now. At this rate she won’t last another year.” Turning back to him she begins to walk away from the moisture farm and Ben notices the ground shift into pristine white tiles, a sharp contrast to the grimy desert of Tantooine. “You were meant to die back in Exogal, that was always your destiny. But her time is not up yet. I can sense the darkness in her is threatening the balance in the force. I would like to offer you a chance at life once more, but there are some…complications.”

Ben doesn’t even hesitate. “Yes. Please. I don’t care about the risks. I’ll do anything.”

The Daughter walks around a tank and Ben recognises where he is. He nostalgically touches the glass; it feels so real. It’s then he notices the face that’s contained, his face. Unlike the last time he visited the Kamino cloning service, the-his body has aged considerably, he recoils in shock as he notices the jagged scar that runs down his face.

Ben is still frozen, staring dumbfounded at the scar, that he almost misses the two tall Kaminoans walk towards his tank. “This subject has shown an impressive psychological profile and is physically perfect. It has absorbed, compartmentalised and is now displaying signs of forming new memory imprints separately. It is a perfect replica of the subject, containing all its memories that were archived.”

The Daughter stands next to him and stares into the tank with a thoughtful expression. “It seems that your journey will be a difficult one. Do you understand that you will have no recollection of the events that have proceeded after your DNA sampling?”

Ben cringes slightly, peeling his eyes away from his physical body. “You mean, I will still be Kylo Ren?"

“You don’t need to go through with this, but Rey will not survive-”

Ben’s face hardens with determination. “I’ll do it. I turned to the light once, I can do it again.” His vision slowly begins to get blurred, and he feels as if he is being lifted into the air. The last thing he hears is The Daughter’s soothing voice.

“Then may the force be with you, Ben Solo.”

In a dark and stormy outpost in Kamino, Kylo Ren’s eyes flash open.


	2. Let the Past Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry Sithmas! Have some angst with that cocoa!

She feels him. For the first time in three years, she feels him through the force. It’s weak, barely there, but it’s enough to cause Rey to jerk up out of her sleeping cot. 

“Ben?”

There’s still no trace of him amongst the dark and cold room. And yet…there’s a faint tug at their force bond.

It gives her hope.

He’s out there and she needs to find him. But as her feeble legs swing over the side of her cot, Rey knows that she’s in no condition to go exploring the galaxy for her other half: she must get stronger. Rey gently lies back into her cot and shuts her eyes. Sleep comes easy tonight and she suspects it has something to do with the warmness in her heart and the lingering traces of their bond.

Kylo Ren was not in a good mood. Not only had he been killed and cloned, he had no recollection of the events after his predecessor had left Kamino. The Kaminoans had given him his own quarters till he was able to procure transport off their planet but were less inclined to give him information about the state of the galaxy. All he managed to gleam from them were that the first order had fallen, and the rebels were rebuilding the galaxy. They made no mention of what happened to Kylo Ren.

It was strange to say the least, knowing that he was and wasn’t really Kylo Ren. He could recall all his memories, emotions, sentiments. He wished it weren’t so, because the death of Han Solo haunted him in his dreams and he still flinched at the recollection of Leia Organa. But worst of all, he hated how his infatuation with Rey had not died alongside his body. Rey. She was attractive, if his “memory” recalled correctly. Not only did she manage to hold her own against him, but she also matched him in terms of force sensitivity.

She had also left him. And like the fool he was, he still pined after her.

Kylo paces back and forth in his room. That would need to change this time round. No more stupid emotions making a fool out of him. Let the past die, he had said. Kylo’s eyes filled with mirth his lips twisted into a sardonic smile.

How ironic.

He sits down on his bed and nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels something lying beside him. There, is a frail individual, back facing him and shivering in the fetal position. But Kylo knows who she is, and all his memories and emotions threaten to take over. She is attractive, even as her bones threaten to poke out of her tunic and even after all the things she’s put him through. He remembers fighting alongside her, them talking and touching hands, her calling him Ben. Ben. Kylo momentarily wonders what life would have been like with her. He can understand why his previous self was so besotted with this powerful force user.

“Ben.”

She’s talking in her sleep. Kylo feels conflicted. On one hand, it is deeply satisfying to know that she dreams of him to the point where she’s calling out to him in her sleep. On the other, she’s still not letting go of his weaker self, and guilt washes over him as he realises, he is a hypocrite.

But Kylo Ren can wait till tomorrow, right now he wants to savour what could have been in a different life. Quietly, as not to disturb her, he leans over to view her face. His eyebrows knit into a slight frown as he notices the lightsaber in her hand. It’s different to the one he remembers. Tentatively, he reaches out to touch the lightsaber when a shock runs through his entire being.

-

They’re fighting. The water surrounds them, sloshing over the wreckage that is their battleground. Rey is aggressive, unusually so. She’s clearly no match for him, and yet he remains stubbornly on the defensive. He’s wondering how much longer she can last before she wears herself out when he feels a sudden shift in the force. Leia. His mother’s life ebbing away.

“Ben.”

He freezes in shock. She’s dying. His mother is dying somewhere in the galaxy and he can’t be with her. A myriad of emotions overwhelms him: grief, pain, sorrow, helplessness. And then searing pain stabs right through his torso as a victorious looking Rey buries the blue Skywalker lightsaber into his side.

-

Kylo yanks his hand away and notices that she’s gone. His shaky hand subconsciously trace the spot where she had stabbed him. That was a memory that belonged to him. His mother was dead and so was he. Rey had killed him. She has played him for a fool and like the idiot he was, he paid the price. Kylo is determined to not repeat history. It is then that he notices the lightsaber in his hand. Igniting it, he raises his eyebrows when a golden blade crackles in his hands.

Rey woke up to an empty bed with no lightsaber. Panic immediately overcomes her when she realises it hasn’t rolled out of her cot. She spends an entire day looking for it, and when she still can’t call it through the force, she concludes that it has simply, disappeared.

Defeated, she heads back to the courtyard, blue lightsaber in her hand. She still refuses to touch Leia’s lightsaber. Too many painful memories lie within its blade. Resting her head against the cool sandstone, she allows herself to listen to the rustling in the wind and the shifting in the sand. Then, the noise fades out and the familiar shift in atmosphere causes her to whip around.

There, standing directly in front of her, is Ben.

She stares at him, eyes wide and breathless.

"Ben?"

It's him. It's really him. He stands stoically, his eyes never leaving hers. 

"Ben!"

Rey begins to run towards him. He looks real, there's no ghostly blue aura that surrounds him. She reaches out towards his face and her fingers tenderly brush over his scar. Rey frowns slightly, shifting her gaze upwards to her Ben. 

Except he's not. 

The last thing she remembers is a force elevating her off the ground and flinging her backwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo...this was a bit shorter but I kind of wanted to get this out by Christmas so haha Merry Sithmas <33

**Author's Note:**

> Oooft thanks for reading!  
> So The Daughter is from the Clone Wars (TV) and Kamino is from the other Clone Wars bwahha. Stay tuned cause I want my happy ending bwahaha.


End file.
